Cat hacking

After a gruesome accident involving a harvester, [Oscar] lost his legs. [Noel Fitzpatrick] a mad scientist veterinary surgeon came to the rescue. [Oscar] now has leg implants prosthetic feet. It is pretty amazing that a cat would even function in this manner. Have you ever seen one try to walk with tape on its feet? We have to wonder why that cat doesn’t have some more awesome looking legs though. We think that cat needs to team up with [Aimee Mullens], the olympic athlete with no legs, to get a better looking pair.

There’s a newer video that was posted on slashdot or engadget yesterday. The cat has newer feet that appear more reasonable. For example, they’re actually kind of foot-shaped. He’s learned to walk a bit better with them too.

I hadn’t but I have now. In the same video I also saw the guy hit the cat more than once which is disgusting. Certainly not something I expected and wanted to see. Please change the link, I’m sure there are plenty of similar videos where the cat doesn’t get hit.

I know one Vet who tries to help all the animals brought to her, and she tries to find them new homes, thats how I got my cat. When my cat fell down from the 7th floor, she kept on trying to keep him alive, a “normal” vet would have given up, I’m thankful to her. I’m sending the link of this video to her, so that she might find new inspirations while helping these wonderful creatures! And hopefully new developments may be done in this area.

Poor little kitty. I’m glad to see that someone cares about that animal and didn’t kill it :)
On a more funny note, let’s hope the cat stays away from danger, or soon will get a bionic tail, next time some lasers and soon we’ll have a fully bionic lol-cat. And we all know this means DOOM for all of us!

actually, cybernetic pets could be the next “big thing”, to simulate the behaviour of a relatively simple animal using custom hardware and software isn’t that hard. All of the cuteness and none of the mess ;-)

the really interesting research at the moment is to build a hardware neural network using an array of “cortical simulator chips” (saw this on el reg) running equations that simulate the actual neurons within the cortical columns to precisely duplicate their behaviour and function.

latest ideas for artificial muscles seem to be based on carbon nanotube infused polymers which “swell” by absorbing lithium or other ions from an ionic liquid, in theory they could contract with many times the force of an organic muscle.

One of my cats is missing a front leg, but it’s missing at the shoulder so I don’t know that he could ever be fitted with a prosthetic. He is happy regardless, and effectively chases and swats down butterflies with one paw. Pretty funny to watch, it’s like he doesn’t realize that he ever had another leg.

Oscar, a not too aware of his surroundings cat: a cat barely alive
Gentlemen we can rebuild him.
We have the technology.
We have the capability to make the worlds first bionic cat.
Oscar will be that cat,
Better than he was before
Better, Stronger, Faster!

@MrX Your post was probably cut because this is not YouTube, and the cat was being shown because of the prosthetic hack. I recommend you try YouTube for your stupid cat video pleasure.

@reality Finally, someone who gets it. We have plenty of American doctors who are doing this all the time. In fact, I bet there are more American doctors doing this than there are Vetenarians doing this. I am a veteran, and I am in a veteran hospital, and I see prosthetic legs here that Oscar wishes he had. Legs that can lift the user from a sitting position to a standing position. I see bionic knees here that can mimic the owners gait within ten steps. I see bionic shoes here. The doctors in this hospital are NOT getting millions of dollars a year here, these guys are doing it because it is a noble cause to repair veterans. We won’t even get into facial cosmetic advances done in this hospital. This is being done all over the United States.

Since when did becoming a doctor become evil? And if you want to know why doctors get paid so much money to be a doctor, just take a look at what they have to do to become a doctor. First take a look at the cost of going to school. Most people can NOT afford to go to school, hence a government loan. Those have got to be repaid, and fairly quickly as the loan interest will quickly escalate until the loan can not be paid. Then you have the YEARS of indentured servatude that they have to complete. Think about being on a job 20 hours a day and getting paid a pittance for it. And don’t forget that the school loan has got to be paid, so part of your paycheck is going to pay that loan. When you get done, you have to pay outrageous amounts for malpractice insurance. Want to know why? Then on top of all that, taking Medicaid and Medicare payments which are not paying for the service rendered. Not going to get into the insurance thing, but it is enough to make you not want quit being a doctor. So between malpractice insurance, being frivolously sued, and not getting paid for your work, insurance practices, having to pay salaries for your secretaries and nurses, equipment costs, and the day to day operations, they are not going to be cheap.

Now we have a major border invasion with people coming in to our emergency rooms and demanding care. Think they are going to pay for it? No, because they would not even take the time to become a citizen in the first place. I have zero, zip, nada, compassion for those people. Be lucky there is not a president like me. If I were president, I would send the military, and they would have loaded guns.